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John Locke's Social Contract
John Locke is a English philosopher, one of the key Enlightenment thinkers, he believes that people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property. He also think every society is based on a social contract—an agreement in which the people consent to choose and obey a government so long as it safeguards their natural rights. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict in a larger imperial war between Great Britain and France. In 1754, the French built Fort Duquesne in the region despite the fact that the Virginia government had already granted 200,000 acres of land in the Ohio country to a group of wealthy planters. In response, the Virginia governor sent militia, a group of ordinary citizens who performed military duties, to evict the French. This was the opening of the French and Indian War. -
Writ of Assistance
The writs of assistance is a general search warrant that allowed
British customs officials to search any colonial ship or building they believed to be holding smuggled goods. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian war, Great Britain claimed Canada and virtually all of North America east of the Mississippi River. Britain also took Florida from Spain, which had allied itself with France.The treaty permitted Spain to keep possession of its lands west of the Mississippi and the city of New Orleans, which it had gained from France in 1762. France
retained control of only a few islands and small colonies near Newfoundland, in the West Indies, and elsewhere. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation of 1763 established a Proclamation Line along the Appalachians, which the colonists were not allowed to cross, but the colonists, really wants to expand the land so they ignored the proclamation and continued to stream onto Native American lands. -
Sugar Act & colonists response
The Sugar Act is a law that passed by Parliament in 1764, raising duties on foreign refined sugar imported by the colonies so as to give British sugar growers in the West Indies a monopoly on the colonial market. -
Stamp Act & colonists response
This act impost the tex on the printed item such as newspaper, books, paper cards, etc. A stamp would be placed on the items to prove that the tax had been paid.
In May of 1765, the colonists united to defy the law. -
Interesting facts of the war
2,165,076 British colonists lived in North America during the war. -
Declaratory Act
Parliament passed the Declaratory Act, it asserted Parliament's full right to bind the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever. -
Sons of Liberty is formed & Samuel Adams
Samuel Adams, one of the founders of the Sons of Liberty. -
Townshend Act & colonists response and Why they were repealed
Parliament passed the Townshend Acts in 1767.This act taxed goods that were imported into the colony from Britain, such as lead, glass, paint, and paper. It also impose a tax on tea, the most popular drink in the colonies. -
Boston Massacre
A fight in front of the Boston Customs House hurt the British soldiers that standing guard there. Five colonies were killed and more are wounded. -
Tea Act
Lord North devised the Tea Act in order to save the nearly bankrupt British East India Company. The act granted the company the right to sell tea to the colonies free of the taxes that colonial tea sellers had to pay. -
Boston Tea Party
a large group of Boston rebels disguised themselves as Native Americans and proceeded to take action against three British tea ships anchored in the harbor. The “Indians” dumped 18,000 pounds of the East India Company’s tea into the waters of Boston harbor. -
Intolerable Acts -- all 3 parts
The Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British to the detriment of colonial goods. -
First Continental Congress meets
56 delegates met in Philadelphia and drew up a declaration of colonial rights. They defended the colonies’ right to run their own affairs and stated that, if the British used force against the colonies, the colonies should fight back. -
Minutemen
Minutemen -- civilian soldiers who pledged to be ready to fight against the British on a minute’s notice—quietly stockpiled firearms and gunpowder -
Second Continental Congress
The Second Congress functioned as a de facto national government at the outset of the Revolutionary War by raising armies, directing strategy, appointing diplomats, and writing treatises such as the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms and the Olive Branch Petition. -
Olive Branch Petition
On July 8, Congress sent the king the so-called Olive Branch Petition, urging a return to “the former harmony” between Britain and the colonies. -
Loyalists and Patriots
Loyalists—those who opposed independence and remained loyal to the British king—included judges and governors, as well as people of more modest means.
Patriots—the supporters of independence—drew their numbers from people who saw political and economic opportunity in an independent America. Many Americans remained neutral. -
Battle of Concord
After a brief skirmish with minutemen, the British soldiers lined up to march back to Boston, but the march quickly became a slaughter. Between 3,000 and 4,000 minutemen had assembled by now, and they fired on the marching troops. British soldiers fell by the dozen. Bloodied and humiliated, the remaining British soldiers made their way back to Boston that night. Colonists had become enemies of Britain and now held Boston and its encampment of British troops under siege. -
Battle of Lexington
The Battle of Lexington, the first battle of the Revolutionary War, lasted only 15 minutes. A fight between 70 minutemen hundreds British soldiers, Eight minutemen were killed and ten more were
wounded, but only one British soldier was injured. -
Continental Army
The Continental Army was formed by the Second Continental Congress after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War by the ex-British colonies that became the United States of America. Established by a resolution of the Congress on June 14, 1775, it was created to coordinate the military efforts of the Thirteen Colonies in their revolt against the rule of Great Britain. -
Battle of Bunker Hill
Cooped up in Boston, British general Thomas Gage decided to strike at militiamen on Breed’s Hill, north of the city and near
Bunker Hill. On June 17,1775,Gage sent 2,400 British soldiers up the hill. The colonists held their fire until the last minute and then began to mow down the advancing redcoats before finally retreating. the colonists had lost 450 men, while the British had suffered over 1,000 casualties. The misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill would prove to be the deadliest battle of the war. -
Redcoats push Washington's army across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania
Washington wants to get early victory so he risked everything on one bold stroke set for Christmas night, 1776. In the face of a fierce storm, he led 2,400 men in small rowboats across the ice-choked Delaware River. They then marched to their objective—Trenton, New Jersey—and defeated a garrison of Hessian in a surprise attack. The British soon regrouped, however, and in September of 1777, they captured the American capital at Philadelphia. -
Washington's Christmas night surprise attack
Washington decided to lead the soldiers to across the ice-choked Delaware River on the Christmas night and attack the British. -
Publication of Common Sense
In a widely read 50-page pamphlet titled Common Sense,
Paine attacked King George and the monarchy. Paine, a recent immigrant, argued that responsibility for British tyranny lay with “the royal brute of Britain.” Paine explained that his own revolt against the king had begun with Lexington and Concord. ( Paine's novel) -
Declaration of Independence author
Declaration of Independence. Drawing on Locke’s ideas of natural rights, Jefferson’s document declared the rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” to be “unalienable” rights—ones that can never be taken away.The Declaration states flatly that “all men are created equal.” Jefferson’s words presented ideals that would later help these groups challenge traditional attitudes. On July 4, 1776, they adopted the Declaration of Independence. -
Saratoga
General John Burgoyne planned to lead an army down a route of lakes from Canada to Albany, While he was fighting off the colonial troops, Burgoyne didn’t realize that his fellow British officers were preoccupied with holding Philadelphia and weren’t coming to meet him. American troops finally surrounded Burgoyne at Saratoga, where he surrendered on October 17, 1777.As a result, the
French signed an alliance with the Americans in February
1778 and openly joined them in their fight. -
Interesting facts of the war
The Battle of Saratoga was the first great American victory of the war and is widely believed to have been the turning point that led America to triumph over Britain. 9/19/1777-10/7/1777 -
French- American Alliance
The Franco-American alliance was the 1778 alliance between the Kingdom of France and the United States during the American Revolutionary War. Formalized in the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, it was a military pact in which the French provided many supplies for the Americans. -
British victories in the South
After the victory of Saratoga. At the end of 1778, a British expedition easily took Savannah, Georgia. In their greatest victory of the war, the British under Generals Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis captured Charles Town, South Carolina, in May 1780. -
Valley Forage
Washington and his Continental Army has really less
food and supplies—fought to stay alive at winter camp in
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. More than 2,000 soldiers died,
yet the survivors didn’t desert. Their endurance and suffering
filled Washington’s letters to the Congress and his friends. -
Friedrich von Steuben and Marquis de Lafayette
In February 1778, in the midst of the frozen winter at Valley
Forge, American troops began an amazing transformation.
Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian captain and talented drillmaster, helped to train the Continental Army. Other foreign military leaders, such as the Marquis de Lafayette
, also arrived to offer their help. -
British surrender at Yorktown
a French naval force defeated a British fleet and then
blocked the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay, thereby obstructing British sea routes to the bay. By late September, about 17,000 French and American troops surrounded the British on the Yorktown peninsula and began bombarding them day and night. Less than a month later, on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis finally
surrendered. The Americans had shocked the world and defeated the British. -
Interesting facts of the war
Throughout the course of the war, an estimated 6,800 Americans were killed in action, 6,100 wounded, and upwards of 20,000 were taken prisoner. Historians believe that at least an additional 17,000 deaths were the result of disease, including about 8,000–12,000 who died while prisoners of war. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, and Great Britain acknowledged America's independence. The treaty established a northern boundary with Canada and set the Mississippi River as the western boundary. (In September 1783, the delegates signed the Treaty of Paris, which confirmed U.S. independence and set the boundaries of the new nation. The United States now stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River and from Canada to the Florida border)
